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Tuesday May 12, 2009

Interoperability between applications in heterogeneous technology environments is essential to successful collaboration. Sun and Microsoft are taking interoperability to a new level by utilizing the SAML federation standard in both the Sun OpenSSO Enterprise federation solution and the forthcoming Microsoft “Geneva” Server federation solution.

As part of these efforts, Sun and Microsoft have created a new whitepaper: "Microsoft "Geneva" Server and Sun OpenSSO - Enabling Unprecedented Collaboration Across Heterogeneous IT Environments" available for download here.

Monday Nov 10, 2008

Starting today, when U.S.-based Internet Explorer users download the
Java Runtime Environment from java.com, they will also be given the option
of downloading the MSN toolbar, powered by Microsoft Live Search.

You can read more about the agreement in the press release and also listen to Eric Klein, VP of Java Marketing at Sun, offer his thoughts on the announcement on Sun News Radio.

Wednesday Sep 10, 2008

Sun and Microsoft announced several developments this week in
our work
to make it easier for customers to use our software and servers together in
virtual environments. We also showed off some demos at Microsoft’s 'Get
Virtual Now' customer event in Bellevue, Wash. on Monday.

Here are the highlights:

- The Sun xVM Server, a datacenter-grade hypervisor, will
be validated to work with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and prior versions.- Sun and Microsoft are working
together to offer customers the Solaris OS as a certified guest on Windows
Server 2008 Hyper-V.- Sun is providing Sun
Ray thin client customers the ability to access Windows as a guest OS running
on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

These announcements build on Sun’s current work with
Microsoft. As a Windows Server OEM,
Sun sells and supports Windows Server products on certified x64 servers and
blades and offers Windows Server utilities and value-added software. Sun also
provides solutions to enable major TCO savings for customers, such as Sun's
Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server.

In addition, Sun and Microsoft plan to integrate Sun xVM
OpsCenter with Microsoft System Center
Configuration Manager 2007. This will mean that Sun customers will be able to
use a single management framework to manage their choice of operating systems
from Solaris and Windows to Linux as well as monitor physical and virtual
environments.

Bob Kelly, Corporate Vice President of Infrastructure Server Marketing
at Microsoft (right) and Lisa Sieker, Vice President of Systems Marketing at
Sun Microsystems (left) celebrate the launch of the Sun-MicrosoftInteroperabilityCenter. Redmond, Wash.,
March 10, 2008.

Thursday May 22, 2008

If you've any interest in standards and open source, one of the most
thought provoking topics in a long time (in my opinion) has been how to save your files in a way that you can access them in the years ahead.

On Wednesday, Microsoft issued a press release that states they will support ODF.

Since Sun has long supported Open Standards and Open Source and our commitment to them remains strong and unwavering. This news pinged my interest so I approached Jim Parkinson, vice president, Developer, Tools and Services at Sun, to ask him about these developments.

In summary, he stated, "Sun welcomes Microsoft's decision to embrace OpenDocument Format (ODF v1.1). We look forward to working with Microsoft on the OASIS ODF Technical Committee to complete the improved ODF v1.2 specification and to submit it as an update to ISO/IEC. This is valuable progress towards the interoperability and openness that customers are demanding worldwide."

To support the CIFS protocol several changes were also made to core components of OpenSolaris including ZFS, VFS, credentials, file system utilities, etc. Sun has also donated these changes to the OpenSolaris project.

Why is this in-kernel CIFS support so important? Check out Alan Wright's blog entry for the gory details... but essentially Windows interoperability requires that a CIFS server convince a Windows client or server that it "is Windows". This is really only possible if the operating system supports those services at a fundamental level.

A related OpenSolaris project, CIFS client, allows OpenSolaris systems to act as CIFS clients in a Microsoft environment -- the flip side of the equation. The OpenSolaris CIFS client stores and retrieve files on a Microsoft CIFS system helping to complete the file sharing capabilities between OpenSolaris and Microsoft environments.

The CIFS projects greatly improve the usefulness of OpenSolaris in data environments that serve both NFS and CIFS clients by bringing the enterprise scalability and reliability of the OpenSolaris to a Microsoft environment.

Tuesday Apr 03, 2007

Here is an exciting bit of news for folks interested in the Atom Publishing Protocols (APP).

Check out Tim
Bray's blog posting regarding the upcoming Atom Publishing Protocol interop that is being hosted at the Google campus in Mountain View. Everybody is invited, provided they bring along an APP implementation, client or server.

Mon, April 16th, 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Tue, April 17th, 8:30 AM - 6:00 PM

Tim has made the prediction that the APP will be huge and if you look at the folks involved, he could be right.